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Show About Senator Clark. An unusally picturesque short personal per-sonal sketch Is that of Senator William Wil-liam Andrews Clark, of Montana, contributed con-tributed to the February Cosmopolitan by Henry R. Knapp, William Andrews An-drews Clark was of Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish stock, and though of slight physique, has so much endurance endur-ance and vitality that at sixty-three he seems as full of energy as he was at twenty-three. At the latter age, after having enjoyed en-joyed an academic education, he hired as a teamster and drove an emigrant wagon from his parents'homc at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, to Central City, Colo., 750 miles, in 45 days. He expected to And gold, and though disappointed in the prospect became a miner. V,- In a year or so, he drove an ox-tcaln ' " to Montana, taking 65 days for the dangerous Journey. AtVlrglna City, he bought a claim with his oxen, and after nine months of back-breaking work, knee-deep in icy water, cleaned up $1,500. Clark drove 300 miles to Salt Lake, bought goods, and became I a trader. Flour was $150 a sack, ham was $1 a pound. One Napoleonic expedition ex-pedition for tobacco netted him $7,000. In the meantime, Clark kept trying try-ing to find a good mine. After some failures, he wanted to know of the technical side and went to Columbia College and studied metallurgy In 1872. Later, he took two jears In Europe. In the meantime, the development of electricity and the necessity for copper wire impressed Clark with the value this metal would have in the future. "So, looking for a big, rich, and easily worked copper mine he occupied oc-cupied his spare time for a year. He rejected many promising ones, until one day there rode into a mining camp, thirty miles cast of Phoenix, Arizona, a modest, unassuming man, -tanned, and bearing the stamp of a 'health-seeker.' He talked mines, and used his eyes. Then he asked the price of a group of mines. " 'One hundred and lifty thousand dollars,' was the reply, Jocularly and skeptically. " 'I'll take It. Make out your papers.' pa-pers.' "What's your name?' "William A. Clark, of Butte; and here's a check for fifty thousand dollars. dol-lars. I will pay the balance in thirty days.' "Those owners were gleeful. Their mine was sold, and so, thought they, was Clark. But that was not their business. It was twenty-live miles from a railroad, up and down a precipitous pre-cipitous mountain trail. It had never made any money, because- there was no egress, . and no smelter. Clark built a railway where it was said that could not be done; and, discarding ramshackle buildings and haphazard machinery, he installed a modern plant, and then built a smelter. The town of Jerome grew up. The out- --sldo tralllc on the railway now pays all .charges, leaving the mine and smelter tralllc clear of expense. "Today, the United Verde mine yields a million dollars a month. It could bo made to yield twlco as much just as readily. The body of copper is rich, and apparently inexhaustible. Fifteen million pounds cash was refused refus-ed by Clark in 1805. It Is worth twice or thrice or even a dozen times that today. No one knows but Clark, and lie will not discuss it. "It,s nobody's business,' is his reply. 'It's not for sale.' " |
